


Turns to Gold

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [29]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7199858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon Dex thought he had to give up one of the most important parts of himself to stay on Atlantis, and then he discovered that part of himself was shared by Evan Lorne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Black and White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, any, _I was born in a thunderstorm / I grew up overnight / I played alone / I'm playing on my own / I survived_ (Sia, "Alive")

One of the things Ronon missed most while he was on the run (besides _home_ and _safety_ and _real food_ and _bed_ ) was painting. He could recite poetry to himself, had made up more poems while he was lying in the dark, waiting for the Wraith to stumble into one of his vicious traps. Sometimes he’d perched in trees and narrated their approaches in a lyrical fashion, watching dispassionately as one of them triggered the switch and its life was snuffed out.  
  
_Along it walks, footsteps in the leaves, murder on its mind and death in one sleeve, and -_  
  
Painting wasn’t something he could carry on the run with him.  
  
When he first wandered around Atlantis on his own and stumbled across the stained-glass windows, he was entranced by their colors, hues and shades he’d never seen before. He itched for the inks and brushes of home, a good piece of linen so he could capture them and keep them forever. As a soldier he’d rarely had the time to paint; painting wasn’t a necessary skill for a Satedan warrior (but poetry, especially drunken poetry, was always welcome). He didn’t expect Atlantis to be any different. It had soldiers and scientists, but no artists. The only picture John had in his quarters was of a musician. He didn’t have any pictures for the sake of pictures.  
  
So Ronon trained and practiced and went through the gate with John and Teyla and Rodney and slowly became one of their team, and whenever he had the chance, he slipped away and looked at the stained glass windows, imagined bathing in each and every one of their colors until he was camouflaged in rainbow.  
  
His grandfather had taught him the most important things in life - combat, hunting, surviving.  
  
And painting.  
  
After his grandfather passed, taken by The Second Childhood, Ronon had been shuffled into a home for children in similar circumstances, destined for the military. Grandfather had been a soldier, so Ronon was proud to have the chance to serve and continue his Grandfather’s proud and honorable lineage. He’d fought, he’d trained, he’d practiced, he’d survived. For years. He’d come into the world with paint and blood on his hands, grown from the little boy with the triple-barreled shotgun to the man with the sword and gun and Specialist rank beside his name, and he’d survived a culling.  
  
The others in his platoon thought he loved Melena because she was a doctor, smart and kind and beautiful. He loved her because she was a good woman, through and through. He adored her because she, too, had colors in her heart. He’d first met her not at the annual military banquet (she the daughter of a general, he standing guard beside the buffet table) where everyone thought they’d met, but at a small shop tucked in an alley just off Market Square that sold the best and brightest inks in the city, the finest brushes. She hadn’t been quite able to reach a certain shade of blue, and he’d fetched it for her, and they’d spent almost the entire day talking about their favorite places in the city, the ones they found most beautiful, the ones they wanted to paint if they had the time.  
  
But the city was gone, and she was gone, and the lovely, jewel-tone inks were all gone, and all Ronon had left was fighting alongside John Sheppard and killing the Wraith.  
  
Until one day, when the mess hall was crowded, and everyone had to double up with everyone else, away from their usual mealtime companions, and Ronon found himself crowded at a table with a bunch of young marines and Major Lorne, John’s second-in-command. The marines were engaged in a spirited conversation about something related to the bizarre Earth habit of staring at boxes, and Lorne, who looked exhausted, had his head down and was picking slowly at his food, writing on his napkin. Ronon wondered how important it was, that he had to write it down while he was eating.

Paper was a rare commodity around Atlantis, because it was disposable and wasteful, and whenever John grumbled about paperwork, he really meant filling out forms on his datapad, and Lorne did most of the paperwork anyway (but John somehow always seemed to know, well, everything that happened in the city, anything militarily relevant, at any rate; Ronon suspected John didn’t know the marines had a pool going about whether he was dating Teyla or Rodney).  
  
“Hey, Major,” one of the marines said, “you in? Gonna come watch the Citadel/Air Force game with us?”  
  
Lorne blinked, coming out of a daze. “Hm? Oh, no. Thanks, though, Green. I have...Major-y things to do.” He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of, I’d better go. Maybe next time.” He capped and pocketed his pen, scooped up his tray, and shuffled through the crowd to the tray return.  
  
He left the napkin behind.  
  
Ronon went to scoop it up, because Lorne probably needed it, and he paused. Stared. Lorne hadn’t been writing. He’d been drawing. And he was _good_. It was a perfect depiction of John Sheppard, from the curious pointiness of his ears to the spikiness of his hair to the sardonic line of his mouth.  
  
All those years alone, missing color, missing lines and shading and beauty, and Ronon had been so relieved to be able to finally stop running that he’d accepted any port in the endless storm that was war against the Wraith, and he’d resigned himself to a world without any of the things he loved, and he’d been wrong. There was beauty in this city. There was lines and shading and color.  
  
The color.  
  
Ronon thought of Lorne’s eyes and a certain vial of blue ink he’d bought and kept and never used because he’d never found the right time to use it, and he wondered.  
  
He hoped.  
  
If the art he’d loved on Sateda could live and flourish in Atlantis, maybe other parts of Sateda could, too.  
  
So the next time he went off-world and encountered a Wraith, he killed it, and he took its head.


	2. Like a Mouse on the Doorstep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate: Atlantis, Ronon Dex/Evan Lorne, gift giving."

Evan opened his door, still yawning, and glanced at his watch. Any moment now his team would come trotting through the corridor, and he'd join them on their morning run. Since he was Air Force and they were marines, he wasn't assigned to the same living section, but at the end of it all, they'd run about the same distance (Evan wasn't about to let a bunch of marines out-run him, because he despised Chair Force jokes).  
  
He glanced down to make sure his sneakers were actually tied.  
  
And he screamed.  
  
A severed Wraith head was laying on the floor at his feet.  
  
Stevens, Walker, Coughlin, and Reed came charging around the corner at full speed. All four of them pulled up short with shouts of horror, and Evan was only vaguely gratified that he wasn't the only one who was freaking out.  
  
Several doors opened, and Teldy poked her head out of her quarters.  
  
"For crying out loud, Lorne," she said, "some of us are trying to slee – what the hell?"  
  
Evan fumbled for his radio. "Lorne for control. Get me security."  
  
"Yes, sir," Chuck said, and then Bates said,  
  
"Go for security."  
  
"Security," Evan said, fighting to keep his voice steady and patient, "there's a Wraith head outside my door. I need someone to check the security feed for my corridor and report back immediately."  
  
"I'm sorry, sir, did you say 'Wraith head'?"  
  
"Yes, Sergeant, I did. Someone cut the head off of a Wraith and left it outside my door, and I want to find out who and why and how, and I want to find out _now_."  
  
"I'll get Zelenka on it," Bates said.   
  
"And send a containment team while you're at it."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"That's disgusting," Walker said, peering at it.  
  
Teldy caught Evan's eye. "You got this, Major?"  
  
"Yes, Major. Sorry about the disturbance." Evan took a deep breath, flashed her a tight smile, and she retreated into her quarters.  
  
The containment team arrived, and Reed and Coughlin started supervising them in bagging and tagging the head and cleaning up the mess. A man could never go wrong with good technical officers.   
  
Evan's heart rate was finally starting to settle (when the scientists had lifted the head, Evan had gotten a good look at the severed spinal cord and arteries and flesh and congealed blood) when Zelenka's voice crackled over the radio.  
  
"Major Lorne?"  
  
"Go for Lorne."  
  
"Major, I think you need to come see this. I'm in the lab."  
  
Evan sighed. He nodded at his teammates. "Go. Run. I'll see you at the briefing later." To Zelenka he said, "Be there in ten." He ducked back into his quarters, scrubbed down as quickly as he could, pulled on his uniform, and headed for the lab.  
  
Weir, Sheppard, Teyla, McKay, and Zelenka were all in the lab crowded around Zelenka's computer when Evan arrived.  
  
Evan dipped his chin in acknowledgment of Sheppard, who had quickly disabused him of the formalities of rank, like saluting. "What have we found? Who's the culprit?"  
  
They all turned and fixed him with a look he didn't quite understand, but he had the sneaking suspicion that despite the seriousness of his mouth, Sheppard was laughing at him.  
  
"It was Ronon," Zelenka said.  
  
The former Runner. He'd been alone for seven years while the Wraith chased him like some of sick game, killing any humans who dared help him. The guy probably had a lot of issues. Evan took a deep breath. "Oh. Okay. What do we do about it?"  
  
"You need to make a choice," Teyla said.  
  
Evan blinked. "A choice? What kind of choice?"  
  
The corners of Sheppard's mouth twitched.  
  
"Whether or not you will accept Ronon's suit," Teyla said.  
  
Evan frowned. "Suit? What? I don't understand."  
  
Sheppard coughed pointedly, smirking behind his hand, and it clicked.  
  
"I – that Wraith head was like a – a dead mouse from a cat? Is this some kind of Pegasus thing?"

"It is traditional to Satedan Warriors, as I understand it," Teyla said, "to bring evidence of brave kills to the object of their affection."  
  
Sheppard let out a strangled sound that might have been a laugh but turned rapidly into another cough when Weir fixed him with a sharp look.  
  
Evan was reeling. "Wait, I don't understand. Ronon's interested in me?"  
  
"So the Wraith head would indicate," Weir said.  
  
"But...but I'm...short," Evan said lamely, because none of this was making sense.  
  
McKay cracked a grin, which he quickly smothered.  
  
Zelenka raised his eyebrows, unimpressed.  
  
"Not that _you're_ short," Evan said quickly. "I just – I don't understand."  
  
"The heart wants what it wants," Sheppard said, and he managed to keep a straight face right until the end.  
  
"Not helping, John." Weir glared at him, but her eyes were bright with amusement as well. "I don't mean to put you in a difficult position, Major. But you have to talk to him."  
  
"Why? What if I just...ignore it?" Evan asked. He'd done that in school before. Ignored boys who were interested in him, because he'd had goals, and those goals included a heavy-handed dose of _don't ask, don't tell_.  
  
"He will keep bringing you gifts," Teyla said. "And they will...escalate."  
  
"Escalate?" Evan echoed. "Are we talking just...multiple Wraith heads, or more pieces of a Wraith, or full a whole Wraith corpse, or –"  
  
"Talk to him, Major," Weir said firmly.   
  
"But – he's on Sheppard's team. And probably no one's explained to him about regs and –"  
  
"If you need to consult with Heightmeyer about how best to approach the subject, that can be arranged," Weir said.   
  
"I would be willing to assist," Teyla added, her tone gentle and sympathetic. "I know navigating alien cultures is difficult for everyone involved."  
  
Evan was filled with a deep and abiding horror at the notion of talking to either Heightmeyer or Teyla about how to let Ronon down gently.  
  
"Let me think about it," he said finally.  
  
"You have to do it," Weir pressed.  
  
"I need to think about how to do it, ma'am," Evan said. He looked at Teyla. "How long do I have? Is there some kind of timeline before he brings his next – next offering?"  
  
"I believe you have at least three days," she said.  
  
Evan didn't think three hundred days would be enough. But he nodded.  
  
And he fled from the lab. He wasn't quite out of earshot when he heard Sheppard and McKay burst into laughter.  
  
Evan opened his door cautiously the next morning before he stepped out for his morning run, but nothing was there. Every time he passed Weir, she cast him a pointed look, telling him to get on with it already, and he saluted her and hurried on his way. Every time he passed Zelenka, the man glared at him and drew himself up to his full height. As for Sheppard and McKay, they seemed to find the entire thing hilarious.  
  
It wasn't. It was just a cultural misunderstanding. Those happened with gate teams and the like all the time. The SGC was one long run of cultural misunderstandings with aliens. Everything would be fine. The scientists were pleased with the opportunity to study Wraith physiology up close.  
  
Evan opened his door on the third day, checked the floor at his door, checked his shoelaces, and stepped out.  
  
And ran right into the human wall that was Ronon Dex.  
  
"Hey Major." Ronon looked down at him, amused.  
  
"Specialist Dex," Evan said. "Good morning. If you'd step out of my way, I was about to head out for my morning run, and my team will be here at any moment."  
  
Thank heavens Weir had given everyone involved strict orders not to divulge any details, simply report that the incident had been corrected and no similar incidents would occur. Evan's teammates were none the wiser.  
  
The corner of Ronon's mouth lifted. "Teyla said maybe I should've started with a more subtle gift. So." Ronon held out the little parcel he'd been hiding behind his back, and how had Evan not realized that? He was really losing his edge. This whole thing was making him crazy.  
  
"Um, thanks," Evan said. It was a small cardboard box, wrapped in a paper towel and tied with a shoelace.   
  
"Go on, open it," Ronon said.  
  
What if it was Wraith eyes or fingers or something else?

Evan sighed. "Look, Ronon –"  
  
"I promise it's not at all Wraith-related." Ronon smirked at him, and oh no, had someone told him about how Evan had screamed when he'd encountered the Wraith head?  
  
"Okay," Evan said slowly, because Ronon looked so earnest, but would this count as leading him on? He untied the shoelace carefully – it would be useful later – and pushed aside the wrapping paper and opened the lid of the flimsy box.   
  
Inside were glass vials full of bright vivid colors, as well as a set of what were obviously paintbrushes.  
  
"Teyla said you paint," Ronon said. "On Sateda, it was traditional to paint with inks."  
  
Evan's throat closed. The colors were beautiful. Some he'd never seen before, were shades he'd never imagined. He had no idea how the inks had been made, but they were obviously fine quality.  
  
"I – thank you, Ronon."  
  
"You're welcome." Ronon leaned down and kissed him gently on the cheek, and then he turned and walked away.  
  
Three days later, Weir cornered Evan in his office while he was trying to sort through a pile of back requisition orders Sheppard had failed to sign.  
  
"Have you spoken to Ronon yet, Major?"  
  
"More like he spoke to me."  
  
"Did you at least let him down easy?"  
  
"No, ma'am."  
  
"Major, what are you thinking?"  
  
"I'm thinking, ma'am, that even though you're a civilian, you're akin to my commanding officer, and there are some things you cannot ask me, and there are some things I cannot tell you."  
  
Weir blinked, took a moment to process. "Oh! Oh. Right. As long as there are no more incidents with Wraith heads."  
  
"There will be no more," Evan assured her gravely.  
  
Weir smiled and left.  
  
That night, while Ronon and Evan were making out in Evan's quarters, Evan tugged on the hem of Ronon's shirt and said, "Take this off. There's something I want to do."  
  
Ronon shucked his shirt obediently, lounged back on Evan's bed and looked too sexy for his won good. "What is it you want to do?"  
  
"Lie down," Evan said, reaching for the box of inks and brushes. "There's something that should be on your skin, if only for tonight."  
  
Ronon smiled and lay back, and Evan began to trace lines onto his smooth, warm skin.


	3. The Best Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Ronon Dex, The best thing about his new life in Atlantis."

Atlantis was amazing. Ronon had grown up hearing legends about the Ancestors, about their magical abilities and wondrous technology. To set foot in their city was like walking into mythology and watching it come to life. In the early days, Ronon had just been grateful for the simple things - beds and showers and food that wasn’t whatever he killed and roasted over a fire (or ate raw because he didn’t dare send up smoke lest the Wraith track him).

Now that he was a little more settled in, was officially _part_ of the Expedition, of Atlantis itself, his favorite thing was, well, the people. No, he didn’t much like talking to them, and most of them were Earthers, who had frankly bizarre traditions and hobbies (he’d tried watching a box with them once and found it incredibly dull, although listening to the pre-recorded storytellers was quite pleasant, reminded him of storytelling around fires on long campaigns or listening to Grandfather; Parrish called them ‘radio dramas’ and the Archivist seemed to have an endless supply of them). But they were people. Who he saw every day.

He learned their faces quickly, memorized them, and something inside him eased every time he passed a person in one of the little grey-and-colored uniforms and recognized him or her. These were people who were dedicated to fighting the Wraith, just like him. They were imperiled not because they’d dared to help him but because they were fighting the same war as him. They were not people the Wraith could victimize to punish him. They were fellow soldiers, they were brilliant scientists.

And some of them were artists.

Kusanagi could make animals and flowers and magical shapes out of pieces of paper. Stackhouse could carve just about anything out of a piece of wood with just his favorite knife (which he also sharpened religiously, and sometimes Ronon sat with him, listening to the rhythmic grind of the whetstone, in companionable silence). John Sheppard played the guitar, a pleasant-sounding instrument. Teyla had a beautiful singing voice.

Ronon’s favorite artist of all was Evan Lorne. They’d find an empty place together sometimes, set up canvas and easels or linens (Evan was learning to paint with Satedan inks, Ronon was learning watercolor and oil and acrylic and pastel and there were so many ways to make pictures on Earth) and paint, occasionally murmuring to each other, borrowing each other’s brushes or checking out each other’s work. Sometimes Ronon woke to the soft sound of charcoal on paper and saw Evan, gloriously nude, sprawled on his chair, feet propped up on the bed, drawing Ronon while he slept. Sometimes Ronon woke Evan by pinning him down to the bed and tracing the tattoos on his arm and chest with his lips and tongue and teeth until Evan was moaning and writhing and begging beneath him.

Ronon’s favorite part of Atlantis was going to sleep beside Evan every night and knowing Evan would be there when he woke up in the morning.


	4. The Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Ronon Dex/Evan Lorne, Ronon looks good covered in green (or any other colour of your choice, I guess) paint."

John knew something strange was going on in Atlantis when he noticed groups of people - male and female alike - gathered in clusters and giggling and talking about trees. He had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t actually talking about trees, that trees was a code word for something. At first he let it go, because he had things to do, colonel-y things, like running patrols and arranging training schedules and coordinating gate missions with Rodney and Elizabeth. But then the giggling and furtive conversations became too much, and he had to find out.

He was sure it was prank-related, and he was the subject of said prank, so he crept around, and he listened. And he was...stumped.

Because it sounded everyone really was talking about trees. About color and shape and line and form, and John hadn’t been so disappointed since he’d taken Art 101 in college and there had barely been any naked women.

Finally, when John couldn’t take it anymore, he went to the number one source of Atlantis gossip, Major Lorne, because that man knew everything that happened on base, even if he wasn’t part of it. Oddly, he’d seemed pretty detached from the tree conversations too. But John had to know.

“So, Major, what’s up with trees?”

“Are you referring to the new trees that grow a coffee-bean-like fruit in Greenhouse Three, General O’Neill’s famed predilection for commenting on the trees he saw on various off-world missions, or the tree for the March page of the new base calendar?” Lorne didn’t even look up from his typing.

John was pretty sure it wasn’t about coffee or O’Neill. “That last one.”

Lorne jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the calendar on the wall behind his desk.

At first John was terribly confused by it, because it had Earth days and months alongside Lantean ones (Atlantis had longer days, shorter weeks, and longer months), but then he realized - what was important was not the calendar itself but the painting.

“May I?” John asked, reaching for the calendar.

“Of course, sir. An email went out about a month ago. Paper calendars available for anyone interested. Had them printed up and delivered on the last shipment from the Daedalus.” Lorne kept typing away.

John flipped to the beginning of the calendar. There were nature scenes, mostly woodland or jungles, in various Earth-based seasons. Lovely color. And then he looked closer and realized - there were people painted into those scenes. Not people - a person. Ronon. Naked and painted so he blended in with the rest of the painting. Huhn. Ronon was - well, John knew Ronon was strong, and he went running every day. He didn’t seem to care much for hitting the weights in the gym with the marines, preferred his own exercise regimen. But...damn. The guy was ripped.

He’d been incorporated into the tree element in more than one painting. The most prominent one, of course, was March, where he was covered in shades of green and looked like some kind of...feral dryad about to leap out of the tree and off the page.

“When...who did this?” John asked, which was stupid, because of course he knew. Lorne must have done it. Lorne was an artist. A painter. After that whole Ronon leaving a Wraith head on Lorne’s doorstep as some kind of weird Satedan courtship ritual, John had never heard the end of it, whether Lorne had let him down easy, but no more Wraith parts had appeared, so John had assumed that Lorne had had a nice chat with Ronon and that was that.

Only apparently Ronon was getting naked for Lorne on a regular basis and letting Lorne paint on his bare skin and -

John paused that train of thought, tugged at his collar. How had Ronon and Lorne kept it so quiet? Ronon was on John’s gate team, for crying out loud.

“Took a lot of designated Sundays, sir,” Lorne said. “Ronon’s ticklish and not especially good at holding still. I think the calendar turned out well, though.”

John swallowed hard. “Right. Excellent work, Major.” He replaced the calendar carefully and scooted out of the room, headed for the shooting range to blow off some, uh, steam. And he couldn’t look Ronon in the eye for a week.

He totally picked up one of those calendars, though.


	5. In Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate: Atlantis, Any, _A fire burns into you / Purifying all / And what I saw was opulence_ \- "Summer", Imagine Dragons"

Ronon had been through the fires of combat, of war, of his entire world being destroyed, of being hunted and watching every person who helped him get slaughtered for daring to show him the least of human kindness. With his tendency toward few words, little armor, and a single favorite weapon, people looked at him and thought him spartan, pared down, purified by fire and left with nothing but the essentials of war.  
  
Evan looked at him and saw...opulence. The way he closed his eyes and smiled around a mouthful of chocolate pudding in the commissary (unnoticed by everyone else at the table because John and Rodney were playing a heated game of Prime/Not Prime and Teyla was getting ready to break out her bantos rods to put an end to the conflict) was downright sensual.  
  
The way Ronon stretched out on the bed, luxuriating in the soft sheets, and squirmed happily as Evan drew a paintbrush across his skin was the definition of hedonistic.  
  
And the way he moved in combat, every motion swift an explosive, carrying all his power and rage, was the very height of delicious excess.  
  
Everything about Ronon Dex was larger than life - his energy, his anger, his passion. And when Evan was tangled with him at the end of the day, limbs intertwined and hands seeking and mouths meeting, Evan was burned by the same purifying fire, and what emerged on the other side was more precious than gold.


End file.
